"I need to finish 8,000 metre climbing soon because I've been so lucky to survive this long," Lock told Aussie home media. Image of Lock reporting from BC in image courtesy of the climber's website (click to enlarge).

First it is necessary to say that the nomenclature race is not entirely correct to designate the act of summiting sequentially all 14x8000ers, but since there is no substitute terminology (grabbers, collectors and other words are equally controversial) and since race and racers are consacrated by use, let´s refer to it.

The list of climbers with all 14x8000ers had only two names by the 80´s: Reinhold Messner and Jerzy Kukuczka, considered by many the best climbers ever in High Asia.

The 90´s had four more admissions: Erhard Loretan, Carlos Carsolio, Krzysztof Wielicki and Juanito Oiarzabal.

The first lady climber almost carved her name on the list this fall. Oh Eun-Sun, currently with 13, just aborted Annapurna, her last 8000er.

With dozens of climbers closing in, we will witness the list to possibly double in the following two to three years. As the count becomes more extensive, every single name loses collective importance. To stand out in a star-crowded sky, one needs to invent different ways to grab all 14, and we are starting to see the first signs of it.

The first steps were taken by visionary Um Hong-Gil. He topped out not only the 14, but added to the mixture two more 8000ers: Yalung Kang and Lhotse Shar.

This year two Spaniards announced new projects involving the 14x8000ers with innovative layers. Juanito Oiarzabal would go for the double 14, summiting each 8000er twice (he needs LH, DH, MN, NP, AN, BP and SH). Carlos Soria will try to be the oldest to finish the list (11 of his summits would be topped out at 60 years plus).

These are only the first moves on new ground. In the future some climber might try to be the youngest to summit all 14, or the fastest, or the first to ski down all of them, or to climb each 8000er via new routes, or to solo all of them, and so forth.

There is also the possibility mentioned by Carlos Carsolio: An interesting challenge for the generations of the future is to get to complete 21 summits. (The 14 main summits and plus 7 subsidiary 8000ers).

<i>Notes:a) the list is updated to October/2009.b) some sherpa names are similar, but they are different climbers. For example, Tshering Dorje II is the owner of Rolwaling Excursion, while Tshering Dorje III is the sherpa partner of Kim Jae-Soo and Go Mi-Sun this year. Both have 6x8000ers in the curriculum.c) only confirmed main summits are accepted. Non-proved claims, fore summits (like Shishapangma Central, Broad Peak Rocky Fore Summit, Gasherbrum II Fore Summit, Makalu Fore Summit, Manaslu Fore Summit etc) and disputed summits are disregarded.d) some summits are still being investigated, so some entries may be revisited in the following months, with possibly a few corrections to be done. </i>#Mountaineering #Mountaineering #feature